Chapter 13: Going up
"That's a big door!"
Welding, shaping, cold metal flowing as if liquid, glowing as my magic formed it to my will.
Sure I had the shape correct, my magic faded as I pulled my horn away from the metal sculpture I was fitting around the mare's girth.
"How does that feel, Chicory?" I asked the mare who was being supported by the structure I had just crafted.
The powder blue pony twisted herself left, then right, up then down, then looked back around at the metal band that was holding her to the wheelchair base. "It just feels... weird," she commented. "I feel trapped."
"Wait until Gadget links the controls to your mind, then it will feel more like part of you," I suggested. I knew just how good Gadget's link magic was from personal experience. She had even linked the sensors in my prosthetic to my nervous system. I could now feel things with the prosthetic! "What about the fit, is it comfortable?" I asked.
"Yes, the fit is good. It's not pinching or digging in anywhere," Chicory confirmed.
"Oh Chicory, don't worry about feeling trapped," Lana interjected as she trotted/wheeled up to us in the prototype wheelchair. "The freedom it gives me is awesome. In a way it is even better than legs!" she bubbled. "And if at anytime you feel too trapped in it, you can just trigger the release, and the band will pop open so you can get out. Or you can just lie there on the platform with the band open. It's sort of like being cradled in a small seat then. Make sure you remember to close it again before trying to move though, or the prop leg won't fold away."
"Okay..." Chicory nodded. "You have been using your wheelchair for days, so I'll bow to your experience. It isn't like there is any alternative. The new unicorns couldn't do anything to heal me, so the only alternatives are to crawl, or to pester Gadget to finish a set of cladding for me."
"You're kidding, right?" Strawberry Cream asked. "Cladding is horrible. You would feel even more trapped than you do now. Every part of you is gripped, restricted, or pushed about by the servos. It is most uncomfortable. I'm hoping I will be able to trade my cladding in for a wheelchair, but as you know, the currently immobile get wheelchairs first, and we don't have enough wheels to make many wheelchairs."
"And because of that, a lot of wheels are being reserved to make platforms on which we can tow several mares at once," Gadget advised. "We have thirty wheels, and at two per chair, and four per trailer, that means we can make a total of five wheelchairs and five trailers, each of which would carry five of the clad, or some of our salvage. Even if we dedicate all of the trailers to towing the clad, that only accounts for thirty ponies. We will still be slowed down by the clad ponies who have to walk, because even the fastest of the clad are still pretty slow. Lana and Chicory have chairs. Violet gets her chair next. I need to find two other ponies with good strong front legs for the other two wheelchairs. Ponies in Helvetica's condition wouldn't be able to use a wheelchair effectively enough to tow anyone."
"Why do ponies need to use their front legs? Couldn't you make wheelchairs with three or four wheels?" Strawberry Cream asked.
"It would be possible, but again, we don't have enough wheels." Gadget explained.
"Use one wheel, for drive and control, and a levitation matrix to support the pony!" Lana suggested.
"Or for that matter, just use a levitation matrix instead of the wheels on ponies that can still use their forelegs," I offered.
"And since you plan to have ponies in wheelchairs towing the trailers, you could remove the front wheels of the trailer, and support its weight on the rear wheels of the wheelchair itself."
Gadget shook her head. "You are overwhelming me! Don't forget that I have to make all these things, and put the control spells on them. So far we haven't used any levitation matrix successfully. I could link one of the mares that will be riding the trailer platforms so she could control it, making it into sort of a five pony wheelchair, but I am worried about load. That is why I was planning to have the wheelchair pull it. That gives us a total of six powered wheels per trailer and wheelchair, making it one powered wheel per pony."
"I can see your point. It wouldn't hurt to link a mare to the trailer as well though. That way if something happens to the wheelchair, the trailer can still be controlled. But please remember you don't have to make them all, Gadget. You may be the best at technical stuff, but there is plenty of sorting, cutting, bolting and other ordinary mechanical work that other mares could do. Just like how you did everything for Chicory's chair, except for the parts Anne needed to do, we could do everything that we could, leaving just the bits we can't to you," Strawberry Cream suggested. "And Lee could help you too. She did make those guns, after all."
Gadget relaxed a little. "True, true."
"And we don't need to leave the stable right now. It isn't attacking us anymore. We can take the time we need to prepare ourselves properly." Lana commented.
"If that's the case, I better make sure that reactor isn't going to misbehave," I stated. "There are also some wiring shortcuts I took that really should be fixed, to lessen the danger of staying here. Maybe we can even shut the reactor down altogether, and just run on the geothermal plant. It's not like the stable is being fully utilized, is it?"
"Even if we turn on every light that is left, that wouldn't be many lights," Lana agreed. "There are so few of them now!"
"We don't all need to leave at once, you know." I volunteered. "Some of us could go up and see if we could scavenge up some more wheels, or even some old carts. And it would be good if we could work out where you were all going to go. You can't just live on any old bit of ground up there. Maybe we can find an abandoned town, or even a town with friendly ponies where you can all settle."
"What about you, Anne? You sound like you are not planning to stay with us," Strawberry Cream observed. She sounded a little upset.
"My only intentions at the moment are to help my mother, and to make sure you are all safe. After that I do not know what I will be doing. For all I know I could end up going back to doing the rounds of the towns, repairing their electrical stuff, like I have been for many years," I said.
"Old habits die hard," Lana laughed. "Trust me, we understand all too well. We are still constantly wary down here, waiting for the next robot attack, even though we know there will be none!"
"You would always be welcome to settle with us," Chicory stated, "And your Demi. And Lee and Saffron."
The others nodded. "Yes, yes. Stay with us Anne."
The next few days were spent repairing and preparing. There was much to be done before I left the stable, either with my team, or with all of the Stable Four ponies. Educating the stable ponies as to what to expect outside was a consideration, and we were planning on taking a few up at a time so they could learn that the sky wasn't going to suck them off the ground, and so they could experience things such as wind and rain, and rough terrain. Some exercise was certainly in order. I was sure these ponies had no concept of how far we were going to have to travel. I didn't really want to take them back to New Appleloosa, as it was already a tight knit community, and I recalled hearing a rumor about a number of other ponies moving there recently on one of the rare occasions I listened to the radio. It would be better for us to find somewhere we could set up an entirely new town. Perhaps one of the abandoned villages would suit. It would be even better if it was on a trade route. Gadget's skills would be marketable. The Level Five unicorns could set up a clinic. Some ponies could run the trading post. Some could work defense. That did still leave a lot severely disabled mares that needed to find a way to contribute. They were good at salvage. Perhaps we needed to find somewhere there was a lot of pre-war junk left.
Saffron had a great idea, and retrieved a copy of Ditzy Doo's 'Wasteland Survival Guide' from his power armor's storage compartment. No doubt it was his free copy from when we equipped ourselves at Ditzy Doo's store, Absolutely Everything, before we set out from New Appleloosa. That book would give the mares something to read, and all things considered, wasn't a bad way to introduce them to some of the problems they would encounter and some of the skills they would need to learn. Oh, not just mares. There were stallions down here too.
Since I had opened the vents to the outside atmosphere, a few of the ponies had come down with a case of the sniffles, so there were some sneezing ponies wandering about, or resting, depending on how bad they felt. The ponies that so far had not succumbed to the common cold were not worried by their contagious companions, fully aware that it was only a matter of time before they too caught the lurgy. The lurgy had been the only real down side to letting in the outside air. The formerly overpowering stench of the place was fading with each day. It had even reached the point where I was no longer using my nasal filters to keep the odor at bay. I hoped the stench that was being vented wasn't attracting any undesirable wildlife. The last thing we needed was buzzards circling above advertising the location of the stable.
Making the stable power systems safe was the first thing I tackled. Fixing the circuit breakers wasn't hard. Basically it involved me undoing what I had done during my battle with the maneframe and robots. All I had to do was separate the shorted wires, and reconnecting them to the terminals I had taken them from. I severed the control links to the defunct maneframe while I was at it, not that there was any chance of the maneframe deliberately deactivating them. I just wanted to be doubly sure that no surges or other spurious signals could mess things up for me. Now the breakers would only operate in the event of a wiring or equipment failure, preventing further damage or fire. Any other interaction with them would be by direct pony intervention of the hoof on lever variety. Lee called it "manual", apparently the opposite of "automatic", and similar to our "hoof activated". It was something to do with hands again, and that strange language she had in her head.
Since I was already down in the lower levels, I took a dose of Rad-X and let myself into the reactor room to see what its condition was like. The door was one of those swinging ones like we had encountered in the service tunnels. When I unlocked it, it reluctantly scraped open, its perished seals disintegrating as it did. Years of the reactor's unattended arcing had produced a lot of ozone, and that had attacked every surface in the room, significantly corroding them. The spark gaps themselves were on the verge of collapsing. Paint had blistered and peeled. The walls were rusty and heavily pitted, particularly around the closed ventilators, where ozone had been leaking out through the failed seals, and no doubt that had attributed to the radiation release that I was pretty sure had led to the suspected mutations. Of course there was nothing I could prove, and nothing that could be done if I did. Ultimately I decided that repairing the mess was beyond what I could do with my magic, instead deciding the safest course of action was to decommission it as best I could. Fortunately I was not a novice when it came to these reactors, as I had repaired quite a few over the years.
After studying the controls and remaining systems for about an hour, I was able to safely shut it down, then using my magic, I sealed and reinforced the containment vessel, the magical contents sealed away until such a time as ponydom had recovered enough technology, or rediscovered the necessary magic to deal with the contained horrors. I formed a warning label in metal on the shell to alert future scavengers as to what had been done, and to warn the stupid from trying to steal it.
After that, I checked over the geothermally powered generating plant, and found that while some parts were in desperate need of service, overall it was in reasonable condition. There was some evidence of maintenance, perhaps from the robots, but it did not appear than anything substantial had been done for years. Fortunately it was in a different room to the reactors and hadn't been etched away by the ozone. Examining it closer I discovered there were actually two plants in parallel, designed to alternate to allow maintenance. One had previously failed, and was currently idle, while the other had been forced to carry the load ever since. The failure was down to seized bearings, well within the capability of my metal forming magic to repair, but apparently beyond the ability of the robots to deal with.
Once I had reformed the bearings, all other surfaces that were showing wear were also restored, pipes cleared of accumulated gunk and grime, fresh oil fed into the system. Fresh is of course a relative term; mineral oils are very old after all! The generator section of the plant was in workable condition, so apart from some routine maintenance, I left it as it was. When the plant was restored to my satisfaction, I opened the valves letting the geothermally heated steam into its turbine. When it finally reached operating speed, I switched the load across to it. As soon as I was sure it was stable, I powered down the other unit to allow it to cool. I would look at it later, if need be. Even in its current condition it could be restarted if needed, though I sincerely doubted these mares would ever need it again.
I climbed back up the two levels to headquarters, eager to find out what the others had been doing during my absence. I wasn't disappointed . The search parties that had been scouring the higher levels came back with assorted interesting items. One sort of item that had made itself very obvious by its absence was the Pipbuck, so it was no surprise when a load of them were levitated in. There were over a thousand of them, I was told, so the mares had sorted through some of what were there, and carried the best of them back, so that anypony who wished for one could have one if they desired. All were to be modified so they could be removed at the wearer's wish, and powered down if needed. These mares didn't trust them enough to risk using them any other way. I can't say I blamed them. I didn't fancy walking around wearing something that actively advertised me as a target for my enemies, even if those enemies had now been destroyed. I glanced sideways at Saffron, then down at my Pipgirl. Hmm. Perhaps I was already wearing something that made me a target, even if the reason was slightly different!
When Lee had developed the Pipgirl, it included the ability for the wearer to remove it if they so wished. The option was disabled for anyone which the establishment needed to keep track of at all times, but the general stable population could remove them as needed, to take showers, sleep and so on. Most chose to wear them all the time anyway. Lee had even devised a simple version specifically for foals. While it lacked most of the features of a Pipgirl, it did allow the adults to locate their children at any time, and to keep them out of the service tunnels, as well as giving the foals an easy way to find their way to school or home by following the big arrows in their Eyes Forward Sparkle. The one I had been presented with had been fully functional, despite my foalhood, as it replaced my rightfully owned Pipbuck which had simply been too big for me to wear.
Another significant find that delighted the stable mares was a small cache of weapons that could use the ammunitions stocks the robots had been guarding. The mares had found half a dozen or so 10mm submachine guns that were in remarkably good order. The guns had been locked in a safe in Security, and had apparently been there since the outbreak of hostilities, due to the head of security being one of the earliest victims, and no one else knowing the combination to the safe. They had been preserved from the fate of the rest of the stable's 10mm weapons, which, in the absence of ammunition, had ended their lives as clubs. Apparently Ruby's little sister Cherry Opal had spent the better part of an hour with her ear pressed to the safe door while she messed with the tumbler. Obviously she was either very lucky, or had taken the first steps towards learning a useful skill! Saffron took the time to train some of the mares in weapon maintenance and repair, so they would be able to look after their new weapons. They also set up a shooting range down on Level Ten, in the room that contained the maneframe, the target being the maneframe itself. When I heard about that, I was glad I had taken the time to isolate it from the breakers and other stable control circuits!
Something that had been found earlier was the stable's reserves of barding. I hadn't given it much thought at the time, but now that I needed to replace my destroyed barding, I was thinking of procuring myself a set, so I was pleasantly surprised when the mares presented me with a set of relatively new stable 4 security barding. They had taken time to resize it for my small frame, had added some extra reinforcing to it, and made adjustments so it could be worn with my battle saddle. That was very considerate of them. They took delight in that as soon as I put it on, I was now clearly labeled as one of them!
"You are one of us now! You have to live with us when we get to our new town!" Hey, maybe I would.
Lee repaired the gauss rifle I had been using, presenting it to Gadget to use both as a template for further production, and for use in their defense, should they need it. Her shotgun was left with Ruby, as Ruby seemed the most suited to using the weapon, despite her 10mm submachine gun cutie mark. That left the stable mares with a reasonable chance of defending themselves if any undesirables decided to invade the stable now that it was no longer sealed. Lee's own gauss rifle was modified so that it could be mounted on her battle saddle and fired using a regular mouth grip aiming system as per the one fitted to Saffron's suit. One of the salvaged beam stun guns was mounted on the opposite side of her battle saddle to the gauss gun.
Violet's wheelchair was finished, and I formed the metal saddles for two more, so that Gadget and the other mares could complete them without my assistance.
Lana, it seemed, was not prepared to be separated from Saffron, or him from her, for that matter, so the last of our preparations were to get her ready to travel with us. A second spark battery was attached to her wheelchair as a reserve. We couldn't afford to have her lose mobility out in the wasteland. A stun gun and one of the 10mm submachine guns were mounted to the hard points on the wheelchair as well. A storage compartment was fashioned from a box with an intact storage spell on it, and reinforced barding was prepared for her.
Finally we had done all that we had to. Sure, there was a lot more that could be done, but I didn't have to do it; the residents of Stable Four could look after that themselves.
It was time for the grand event, the opening of the Stable door. It was also time for the first expedition to the surface. Some of us were going up to go out salvaging, or in my case, to continue with my original mission of trying to get help for my mother. I would also be keeping an eye open for anything that could help the Stable Four ponies. Some ponies were just going up to see what the outside was like. We had briefed them on surface situation as best we could, but no amount of talk was ever going to prepare them for the great up. Wind was another thing they had never experienced. While I had managed to assure them that the sky was not going to suck them off the ground, I could not make the same assurances about the wind! And then there was rain, thunder, lighting, dirt, mud and a whole array of other common things they had never encountered before.
A group of curious and enthusiastic ponies had been selected to be among the first to set foot on the surface. They had been equipped with the stable weapons. Some had already taken the elevator up to Level One and were waiting for us. My team, which now included Lana, were now in the elevator with two representatives from the Level Five ponies as well as Helvetica and her foal.
"Why aren't we taking the service elevator up instead of trying to open this huge door?" Rusty and Cirrus's foal, Cloud, asked Saffron as we rode up the internal elevator from Level Nine. We still hadn't freed the door on Level Eight that would allow access to the elevator and stairs up. The exploding robots had jammed it quite firmly. It was by no means an insurmountable task, but simply going down a level to take the elevator was so much easier.
"There is no service elevator," Saffron replied to the foal.
"But I heard you, and your mares came down the service shaft. Were you telling lies?" Cloud asked.
"Nope," Saffron answered. "And they ain't my mares, young'un."
"Then how did you get down the shaft?" Cloud puzzled.
"Trust me, getting down was no problem. Coming to a safe stop at the bottom was where it got tricky!" Saffron responded with a laugh.
"Huh?" Cloud puzzled.
"We fell," Saffron stated. "The shaft is there, but the elevator is missing. When we walked on the ground above the shaft, it collapsed, and we fell down the shaft."
"Wow. So how did you stop at the bottom then?"
"Unicorn magic," Saffron explained. "Anne used her magic to make a big air bubble, and we all bounced off that."
"A big air bubble? Humph. I don't believe you!" Cloud responded.
"Whether you believe me or not won't change how we stopped, young'un!" Saffron laughed.
Smiling, I created a small bubble, with my magic and drifted it over to the foal, letting it settle on his nose. He tried to dodge it a couple of times, failing, as I made sure it stayed with him. Just when he was beginning to get exasperated, I had the bubble duck beneath him and start growing, holding it there as the elevator slowed to a standstill, momentarily reducing our weight. A touch of levitation magic did the rest, leaving the foal floating at eye level. That was when I let the bubble burst, resulting in a surprised squeak as Cloud expected to find himself falling, then a second squeak when he realized he wasn't.
"Gotcha," I said, lowering him back to the floor as the elevator doors slid open, giving us a view of the dimly lit Level One corridor.
"Not fair," he muttered in response, his coltish pride bruised. He stepped out, then looked back at us, his demeanor a little sulky.
"Maybe it wasn't fair, but you not believing I stopped us falling with a big bubble wasn't fair either. When you said you did not believe us, it was like calling us liars," I commented, following him out. "I really did stop us with a big air bubble. It was a very big bubble that went all the way to the shaft walls, and trapped a lot of air inside, so it made a nice cushion for us to fall onto."
"Oh! I think I understand," Cloud commented. "I was thinking of a bubble like the one you made under me, and that would be too small."
I nodded. "Yes, a bubble that small would be useless. It took all my magic to make the bubble, and it made me so tired I had to sleep after we landed," I admitted.
"How big is outside?" the colt suddenly asked, the bubble discussion forgotten. "Is it as big as ten atriums?"
Demi giggled at that. "It's a lot bigger than that, little one!" Then turning to me she added with another chuckle, "He's at the 'asking questions' age!"
"Is it as big as a hundred atriums, no, a thousand atriums?" he tried. Clearly, the Stable Atrium was the largest volume the colt had experienced. It had amazed him when he saw it for the first time a few days ago. Actually, it was the largest volume any of the stable dwellers had seen, being the only area in the stable that was two levels high. It was big enough to take an assembly of a thousand ponies, and had probably had several times during the initial drills, before the stable was permanently closed.
"Bigger," Demi stated. "Outside is a lot bigger than that. You cannot imagine how big it is outside."
"It can't be a hundred-million atriums big!" the colt exclaimed, sure he had the size beat with meaninglessly large numbers.
"Just wait and see," Saffron suggested.
The distance between the elevator and the stable entry was not great. We could hear the murmur of conversation ahead. A short distance along the corridor was the vestibule. Directly across the corridor from it was a staircase leading down to the lower atrium, allowing a large number of ponies to enter the stable as quickly as possible, the atrium serving as a temporary holding area for the entering masses. Now the atrium was a large, mostly empty room, a few discarded seats and assorted pieces of unwanted garbage strewn about. We turned away from it, filing into the vestibule. Across from us, set in a lowered area was the huge, gear shaped stable door. Its opening mechanism hung from the ceiling. Railings kept ponies from falling into the lowered area, making us feel like we were actually standing on a raised platform. To the left and right were areas that could probably hold fifty ponies each, if they were cozy. Now there were half a dozen ponies standing in each area. Beyond these areas were smaller service rooms containing ancillary computer gear and terminals. They had probably been used to register ponies when they were first accepted into the stable, and were given orientation in smaller groups. Hidden doors in those small rooms led into service tunnels, one connecting to the Overmare's office via a door revealed by raising her desk, the other leading to Security. Both hidden doors were currently closed.
"So we're really going to do this?" Helvetica asked, not expecting an answer. All of the Stable Four ponies probably felt the same way. We were about to do something that was outside their group experience, outside their ancestral memories going back a good few generations. Hey, I knew exactly how it felt, having done the same thing myself fifteen years ago.
"Saffron, ladies, please take your positions," I requested.
Saffron, again in his full armor, Lee, Ruby and Lana moved to the top of the stairs to the recessed section, and readied their weapons. A few of the others moved to the railings on each side, 10mm submachine guns clamped in their mouths. Even Demi pulled her pistol and took aim. I checked my own weapons were ready. We weren't going to open the door only to be overrun by some wasteland nasty or other undesirable pouring through the door the moment it was open. What was beyond it, we had no idea. No records of the stable entrance could be found in any of the data I had salvaged from the dead maneframe. Helvetica's learned history also made no mention of what lay beyond. I moved to the door control console, which was on the right platform, near the depression, and hooked my hoof over the door actuating lever. A feeble red lamp was glowing on the panel.
"Here goes, and let's hope the damn thing works," I announced, pulling the lever forward. The red lamp extinguished, to be replaced by a green one. Klaxons sounded, and several rotating lights, amber in color, activated. The cover at the center of the door, bearing the number four, slid to one side, revealing a socket. The door opening mechanism swung forward, extending a complex looking plug, which it plunged into the corresponding socket on the door. These giant gear shaped stable doors were made of interleaved layers of stationary and movable locking plates, likewise the doorways into which they were plugged. When in their home position, the movable plates were rotated a number of degrees, resulting in the movable teeth of the gear like structure interleaved with the fixed teeth of the door frame and vice versa. At several hooves thick, the result was both radiation and blast proof, and near impossible to open without the mechanism. Much screeching and grating emanated as the mechanism slowly rotated the locking plates, then withdrew the massive slab of metal from the doorway, slowly moving it to the right, and out of our way.
We watched the growing crescent of blackness it revealed. I was quite sure it was daytime, so the darkness confirmed that the stable door was underground, hidden by some sort of cave or tunnel system. The dank odor of mould, wet earth and rock wafted into the vestibule, as well as assorted animal smells. Neither tones of sand or a flood of water had poured through the door, and so far no raiders, or other wasteland undesirables had made their presence known. That was a good start.
"Smells like death out there," Demi commented.
"Oh, great, not again," I muttered. This stable had smelt like death when we arrived. Was the stench out there the source? Was it a pocket of air that had leaked from the stable? Probably not. The door seals should have kept the stench out. The external vents obviously did not link to the area outside the stable door, because the stable air had been improving ever since I had opened the vents to the outside. That meant something was rotting within the tunnels.
Saffron took the few steps down the ramp to the recessed area, and approached the doorway. Activating his head lamp, he peered into the gloom. I bounced over the railing, dropping down beside him. The other three near the ramp moved up behind us. There wasn't much to see - just a tunnel that appeared to have been hewed out of solid rock in places, and reinforced with concrete and steel in others. I activated the light on my Pipgirl, and magically lit my horn, then walked the short distance to the door, climbing over the awkward toothed door frame and into the tunnel beyond. It sure did stink in here. Perhaps some creature had been using it as a den, and the stench was from the rotting remains of its meals. I didn't fancy meeting such a creature. I took two more cautious steps forward, and that was when I heard it... the gargled hiss then shrieking of the living dead.
Zombie ponies.....
Footnote: Maximum Level. Perk: ... Well, dang.